This follows up on my 9/1/05 report, "The New York Times and Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards: High-Rises and Low Standards: A Pattern of Inadequate, Misleading, Mostly Uncritical Coverage." The report (link below) analyzes Times coverage of the proposed $3.5 billion project, the largest ever in Brooklyn, to build a basketball arena plus at least 16 high-rise buildings. Here I analyze further coverage of the project and also provide my own reporting.

Saturday, November 26, 2005

Gehry's "horrible" sketches & their treatment by the Times

So I missed Frank Gehry's presentation the other day (I'm traveling), but I was intrigued that Gehry apparently described the 7/5/05 presentation of his sketches in the New York Times as "horrible." Let's remember what Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff wrote at the time, as noted in Chapter 14 of my report:What is unfolding is an urban model of remarkable richness and texture, one that could begin to inject energy into the bloodless formulas that are slowly draining our cities of their vitality...Mr. Gehry is still fiddling with these forms. His earliest sketches have a palpable tension, as if he were ripping open the city to release its hidden energy. The towers in a more recent model seem clunkier and more brooding. This past weekend, a group of three undulating glass towers suddenly appeared. Anchored by lower brick buildings on both sides, they resemble great big billowing clouds.

Now Gehry may have simply been referring to the graphical presentation that was provided exclusively to the Times. (Did Gehry's office provide it? It's not clear, but I think it was more likely the developer, Forest City Ratner.) Still, it would be interesting to hear what Gehry has to say about the critic's rhapsodic assessment.